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DevTools Digest: Film strip and a new home for throttling

DevTools news, as fresh as it gets

The first news item in this post is a little meta – it's this update
itself! Every now and then but at least once a month, I'll summarize what's happening in the world of Chrome
DevTools, fresh off the press.

And when I say fresh, I mean it: I'll talk about new features that have just
arrived in Chrome Canary,
so if you'd rather stay in stable land, that's cool too. But if you're
adventurous and want to stay on top, these posts are for you. In addition to the
latest features and bugfixes, you will find a Community Heartbeat section at
the end of each post, highlighting the greatest you, our beloved users, have
contributed.

Without further ado, let's dive into actual news.

New in DevTools

Film strip-like screenshots in Network and Timeline

Just a week ago, we've moved a significant new feature out of experimentation:
The ability of capturing screenshots of the page in both Network and Timeline
tab.

In the Network panel, click on the little camera icon to enable the
capturing of frames, then reload the page to trigger the capture. Other than
screenshots captured with other tools like
WebPageTest, we currently only show frames that
actually came from a paint.

While double-clicking on one of the frames shows a zoomed view (then use
left/right arrows to navigate), hovering over them shows lines across the panel
and timeline to visualize exactly when the frame was captured, allowing you to
correlate to the load sequence. This makes debugging common load issues such as
render-blocking web fonts much simpler.

In the Timeline panel, you can enable screenshot capturing by toggling the
"Screenshots" checkbox in the top toolbar. Things work a little differently
here, compared to the Network panel: In this case, we try to capture as often as
we can – regardless of actual paints – to be able to drop said screenshots on a
linear timescale that correlates with the other rows in Timeline. Instead of
needing to double-click to show a preview, zoomed in frames appear on hover.

As the two are a little out of sync in terms of functionality and UX, we'd like
to encourage you to try out the feature(s) and provide any feedback you have
through tickets on crbug.com/new or via tweet to
@ChromeDevTools.

Network Throttling in the Network panel

Network
throttling,
a feature we've added when introducing our Device
Mode, found its second
home in the Network panel toolbar so you can focus on network optimizations in a
single place.

This new home is just a mirror though: It's still available out of Device Mode,
as simulating bad connectivity is still highly important when working on making
your site responsive.

Finally, are you one of these poor souls that have wondered why your internet
connection is broken after a long day at work, only to discover that you forgot
to disable network throttling? The Network panel tab now shows a warning
icon when network throttling is enabled.

Community Heartbeat

Down and dirty with Chrome DevTools

Bret Little released this nice little
walkthrough course that acquaints you with basic DevTools functionality but also
offers a lot of in-depth tips and tricks. Definitely useful info in there, and
more DevTools docs never hurt!

A DevTools IDE…?!

Kenneth Auchenberg, web developer and DevTools aficionado, developed a
proof-of-concept standalone DevTools app few months ago, and somehow his blog
post
made (hacker) news again this week.

Turning DevTools into a full blown IDE is a fun idea, one that many of our team
members have dreamed about before, but it would also be a project of epic
proportions.

What do you think? Is the DevTools IDE a pipe-dream or could you see it work
out? How should it looks like? Let us know in the comments!